The wild win over Oregon on Saturday in Jerry
World provided yet another magic moment to add
to Auburn lore.
But, that’s all in the past now, and Auburn can’t afford to overlook Tulane as the Green Wave comes to
the Plains following a 42-14 win over FIU.
Head coach Gus Malzahn knows that the team is
going to need to be ready for Tulane and should not
get hung up on the Oregon win.
“That’s going to be our challenge as a team,” Malzahn said. “I think everyone saw that was a big emotional win, everything that goes with that...You’ve
got to put that in your rearview mirror, and you’ve
got to realize that we’re playing a very quality opponent. Our players turn on the film, and they can tell
that these guys play their guts out, they play hard and
they’re talented.”
Auburn is currently 28-26-5 against members of

the American Athletic Conference. The most recent
meeting between the Tigers and an AAC team was
in 2018 when No. 10 UCF defeated No. 7 Auburn in
the Peach Bowl.
Tulane is leading the all-time series against the Tigers, 17-14-6.
The last meeting between the two teams was in
2006, which was a 38-13 Auburn win.
Even with Tulane’s smaller football status, upsets can still happen. Just this past weekend, Tennessee was upset at home in Neyland Stadium, 38-30,
by Georgia State of the Sun Belt Conference, while
Missouri fell at Wyoming.
Derrick Brown knows his team can’t look past a
quality Green Wave team.
“They are a very good team,” Brown said to reporters on Tuesday. “As you’ve seen, like last weekend in
college football, people taking different conference
teams not so serious and it came back to bite people.
So I mean, it’s one of those things where that’s not
how we want to approach it.”

Down 14-3 against an unrelenting offense, Auburn’s defense was on its heels. In only three drives it
had given up 191 yards.
And to make matters worse, its offense had just
turned over the ball, dealing with the early struggles of
a freshman quarterback.
Someone needed to step up. They needed a leader.
KJ Britt was that guy.
“The whole time, we were positive,” said Britt, who
replaces Deshaun Davis as the Tigers’ starter at middle linebacker. “Never was there a moment that anybody doubted that we were going to win. Nobody ever
hung their heads low. We knew we were going to fight
no matter what.”
Britt not only tallied seven tackles, including one
and a half for loss during the 27-21 comeback win, but
he also was a pillar for the defensive players to rely on.
The Auburn defense, led by Britt, held Oregon to
just 90 rushing yards after allowing 67 in the first
quarters.
The Ducks rushed for 10 yards in the second quar-

ter, nine in the third and four in the fourth to bottle up
one of the nation’s more explosive backs in the country, C. J. Verdell.
Last year, at the Mike linebacker position, was the
ever-vocal presence of Davis.
Davis was a senior and seen as the heart and soul of
the defense.
He was everywhere on the field, then was everywhere on the sideline, continually picking up his teammates’ heads when they were down.
Once Davis graduated, Britt had to fill those shoes.
Britt cited leadership as the key to bottling up Oregon’s offense.
He knows that Auburn is looked upon as one of the
top units in the country, so he was confident that they
had the talent to right the ship.
“We just had to settle down,” Britt said. “Make a few
corrections and make a few adjustments. We’re going
to be alright.”
Even after the best statistical game of his career,
Britt sees room for improvement.
“I’m not satisfied,” Britt said. “I had too many mental errors. Little stuff I got to work on. We got to keep
chopping wood.”

The people of Auburn, Alabama,
are still attempting to reduce their
collective blood pressures to a reasonable level following the Tigers’
dramatic win over the 11th-ranked
Oregon Ducks this past Saturday.
For many, the 27-21 victory
is hoped to be the beginning of a
promising season. For junior defensive tackle Tyrone Truesdell, it was
a career game that Auburn hopes
translates throughout 2019.
Leading into Saturday’s clash

on the gridiron, the 6-foot-3,
325-pound native of Augusta,
Georgia, had recorded a combined
total of 13 tackles across his freshman and sophomore seasons, only
10 of which were scored as solos.
The junior turned up the heat this
weekend, recording six tackles (two
unaided), four assists and half a sack
in the season opener.
When asked about Truesdell’s
performance, head coach Gus Malzahn spoke highly of the junior’s play.
Malzahn made a point to comment upon Truesdell’s impact upon
the outcome of this past week’s

game, the coach pinpointed Truesdell’s penetration against Oregon’s
defensive line on the critical fourthand-inches stop in the fourth quarter.
“He’s got some experience and
now he’s taking his game to the next
level,” Malzahn said. “... He’s just got
to continue to do that.”
Truesdell will look to build on
last Saturday’s performance against
LSU transfer quarterback Justin
McMillan and an explosive Tulane
team, fresh off a victory in which it
racked up over 500 yards of total offense.

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